lessdazed comments on Why do people commit mathematical mistakes? What are the mechanisms behind them? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Raw_Power 07 September 2011 09:57PM

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Comment author: lessdazed 09 September 2011 04:25:42AM 1 point [-]

The study is about people confused about something not worthy of further study. At first glance it might look like a study of the thing not worthy of further study itself.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 09 September 2011 04:28:57AM 0 points [-]

Ah. I see. I don't think that was what was going on here. Wedrifid seemed to find it frivolous because he considered it trivially obvious that the two types of mistakes would occur together. I don't think for example wedrified necessarily consider it frivolous if someone did study which looked for a correlation between not understanding/accepting .999...=1 and say performance at dual-n back or some other task that is not as obviously related to mathematical ability.

Comment author: wedrifid 09 September 2011 05:37:11AM *  0 points [-]

Also because, we'll it'd be fun to do the study but I'm not quite sure how it got to the top of someone's research priorities! On the other hand I suppose it would be a cheap study to do and something to keep the post-grads amused.